Discussion Genres of Chinese WN's

There are implications for both 'immortal' and 'hero' parts that are lost in translation lol.
It was a reply to op post btw.

 

Eh... you guys are REALLY splitting hairs, seriously, the actual (layman) chinese that reads it don't give a shit. The terms were more or less used/invented for marketing/identification reasons or by people that are professors in this. I mean, just go to any of the big chinese sites that hosts these, you will find that the series are more often than not listed by popularity or targeted demographics as opposed to genre.

Sun wa, gua gu, xin ci, xin hup, all of them are in the "fantasy" genre of the english term.

Someone was making a pretty good argument for sun guo yeo mor fat do xin chown (gods, ghosts, spirits, magic/demon, mystic arts, way (the dao that keeps coming up everywhere), (and I forgot what was the last hanji here or what I meant >.<)) being under the fantasy umbrella in english and really no one gives a shit. Mohup (wuxia), especially some of the more crazier ones or sun wa inspired ones are technically not mohup once they start pulling shit out like a cultivation that causes you to photosynthesize instead of requiring food. It's still called mohup cause "most" of its setting fits in there. You will find that aside from the hard definitions (ie. fiction), the "genres" are actually really loose when it comes to usage as it's more a label to give a general impression of the setting as opposed to be an all compassing, line in the sand definitions that we have in english.

Like in gua gu (ghost stories), it doesn't tell you if it's a comedy/horror/romance, it's just there to tell you that it's literally a "ghost story". It also doesn't mean that gua gu can't be xinhup or wuxia (actually, I remember a TVB series like that!). So I'd say just go with the broad strokes and shift/fix them as needed.

 

I love issth, but meng hao is not a good person lol.

Like he is not the protagonist from xian ni who borderlines evil, but I would say is kinda he is kinda grey,

He was a lot nicer in the beginning, then he realized being nice sucks.

 

the state of the world they live in is eat or die. To be fair i loved the arc when he solely focused on medicine, he was probably at his more generous then

 

But Meng Hao is a morally complex character, who makes morally complex decisions. He is a normal human like us, instead of the crazies who normally populate such stories.

 

I was hoping someone would make a thread explaining these as I found my translation under these kind of category search through trial and error the genre for my novel is literally game or close to it starts with a Y but I forget. And when trying to find something other than Xianxia and wuxia to list my novel as I couldn't nor could I make a different listing.

Hopefully @Tony will put more options like these categories/genre on the novel tags, it would make it way easier to narrow down the searching rather than all the 'unique' tags people will add.

 

(￣▽￣)

 

not exactly correct...
a lot of chinese websites dont have xiuzhen tag (cultivation). they either call it xianxuan xiuzhen, or sometimes wuxia xiuzhen. its rare for a website to have a categoary of xiuzhen by itself.

depending on which chinese website ur getting ur raws from there may be some slight differences between xuanhuan and xianxia.

xianxia: mc doesnt have to be the good guy. as long as u have to cultivation its xianxia. cultivation=xianxia

wuxia: if xianxia is lvled based grinding, then wuxia is technique based grinding. basically u wont get dbz style of new more powerful villians wnen u clear a quest.. the world is fixed. basically none of some great martial ancestor comes out to kick ur ass and hes xxx realm higher so u gonna escape to grind and come back for revenge later.

also xianni is xuanhuan based on chinese wikipedia, idk the reason y its xuanhuan since i dont read xiani.

edit2:

xuanhuan is basically xianxia BUT without the mc acting the same way as xianxia mc does, OR the mc acts the same BUT the plot formula is different. for example: mc doesnt go on "adventures" to find "items/powers" all fking day, but actually stay in 1 place for a long time. or the mc "skips" powerlvls/realms. also if it contains western setting elements in the story then its automatically xuanhuan.

 

• Short Story
• 仙侠 Xian Xia
• 古代 Ancient
• 喜剧 Comedy
• 武侠 Wuxia
• 游戏 Game
• 玄幻 Fantasy
• 神秘 Mystery
• 穿越 Time Travel
• 言情 Romance
• 都市 Modern
• 重生 Rebirth

Copied straight from shushengbar@com. (I think there's more terms for genres like "historical" but I forgot what site it was on.)

 

that rebirth is that reincarnation and thing like current otome game novel goes to?

 

I use Google translate to read WN on qidian.com. What's the difference between traditional martial arts and martial arts fantsy? And what separates the Martial Arts Xian Xia fics from, say, fantasy fics?

 

subgenre is more important actually.
Also, web novels contain genre of history历史， millitary军事，horror 灵异， stories happened in modern time 都市, fan novel 同人. wuxia is a diifferent genre from xianxia.
xianxia is actually stories of Chinese martial arts. Physics still works partialy,
xuanhuan should be an exaggerated version of martial arts. No Physics at all. A dream world.People can become as strong as author wants.
Xianxia is a story mainly about how to become xian (taoist version of god... however, there are still some tiny different. xian is person who can live longer(ideally fowever, the most important point) , can do magic things (secondly important) and strong (least important)) Nearly all the xianxia relates to Taoism.
Novels may be put in wrong genres sometimes for many reasons: attracting more readers in a famous genre, or
misunderstanding of the genre, or just errors.

Rebirth is a tag actually. Authors usually use rebirth because many people like it. Moreover, it may be easier to write a MC with thinking of modern way. It is also a good way to provide MC with some advantages which many readers love.

 

In the romance of the three kingdoms,the word used for hero was “英雄”, while xia is 侠. I would say 英雄 is closer to the meaning of hero in English. Xia is commonly used as a title for people that make a living in wuxia world(in xianxia novels, the xiuxian world). A young man in wuxia world can be respectfully call “少侠”(young xia), when people don't even know him. It is true that xia are supposed to be someone who hates evil, who would sacrifice his/her life to save innocent people, who is brave...that's why it's a title. Anyway I don't think wuxia or xianxia as a genre implies that the protagonist has to be a good man, although it is usually the case. Most people would think that a good representation of xia spirit is important for a wuxia or xianxia novels, but what is xia spirit or if the protagonist himself needs to be a traditional xia is up to the author.

 

Are you sure they are not just trying to say the western word "Fantasy"? I think it is the lazy translators that try to make people think that that meaningless pinyin is a "chinese term", while in reality 奇幻 is a perfectly translatable word.

Same with 科幻. What's wrong with using "Sci-Fi" instead of it?

P.S. seriously, pinyin is only good for keeping in personal names, and even that is a big stretch since completely different hanzi can have exactly the same pinyin which leads to embarrassing situations where you have "Ji girls being hunted by Ji clan" and only half way through the story arc you find out they are completely unrelated from a rare wordplay translators note (Spirit Vessel, I'm talking about you!)
If you can find an equivalent English term you should certainly use it instead.

 

穿越 doesn't just mean time travel.
It refers to all form of 'crossing over' whether it be dimensional-hopping or time-travel